Flicking through the job ads, what do you look at first? Salary? You're not alone. It is human nature, and makes financial sense, to keep an eye on pay rates. But an increasing number of employees are realising that their pay packet is not everything – and employers are keener than ever to attract the best people using secondary benefits that go beyond traditional perks such as private healthcare or season-ticket loans.

Employers are blurring the lines between work and play, office and education, with an array of activities, clubs and social events that go way beyond a pint in the local on a Friday evening. These schemes do far more for team bonding than those often-cringeworthy "build-a-raft" exercises and other attempts at enforced unity, and they also aid staff retention.

"We listen to what people want to learn about and it really allows people to explore passions as well as develop a sense of pride in what they do," says Lou Burrows, a director at innovation company ?What If!. "We are developing all the time and satisfying that hunger in the people that we have."

?What If! has built its reputation on invention, so it's no surprise that creativity plays a part in the benefits it offers to employees. Burrows is a strong believer in letting employees organise their own secondary benefits and using social media to support these.

She cites the company's Seriously Exciting club as an example of creative events that keep employees happy, engaged and thinking. As the club's name suggests, events under this banner can include just about anything outside of the business that intrigues or excites employees.

But the company also makes sure there is intellectual stimulation alongside the usual sports and social activities. "We have a Pecha Kucha night once a month," says marketing manager Sarah Wilson. Pecha Kucha (Japanese for "chit-chat") is a presentation method by which a series of 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, with attendant explanations.

"People can do it on anything from their gap year to their allotment," says Wilson, who is preparing for her own Pecha Kucha. "Mine is going to be on Lance Armstrong and the doping story, as I am a keen cyclist and have been reading around the topic a lot."

Wilson also initiated a yoga course, organising the sessions while the business supplied money for the mats. This is the way most events happen at ?WhatIf!, with new pursuits honed, advertised and discussed on internal social media platform Yammer.

At aerospace engineering firm Finmeccanica UK, secondary benefits are all about discounts that help employees enjoy their leisure time, often with colleagues. With offices all over the world, the emphasis is on the local – not just to the UK, but in many cases, to a specific office. "We have a lots of clubs and societies and they are very much locally driven," says Martin Flavell, vice president of human resources.

Finmeccanica UK employees get discounts at supermarkets such as Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Asda, but with sites as far apart as Edinburgh and Yeovil, it is the local negotiation of discounts and offers on activities as varied as cinema trips, golf clubs and spa visits that makes employees feel the business is looking out for them.

The focus on paying attention to what is happening at a local level also extends to how the firm supports individual community action. "As we are an engineering company, we encourage people to belong to local engineering societies," says Flavell. "We also encourage people to get involved in local schools as governors and as Stem [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] ambassadors."

Nonetheless, Flavell says that secondary benefits are only effective as one part of the package. "No one is going to take a job or stay with us for a good discount on a gym membership or a percentage off their shopping bill. We use this as a way of putting icing on the cake," says Flavell. "It is hard for businesses to give large pay increases at the moment and these schemes, when run well, are a low cost way for business to deal with that."

The success of such benefit schemes may not have job-hunters skipping past the salary on job advertisements just yet. But as wage rises slow there is every chance more and more of us will be taking a second look at what employers can offer aside from our payslip.

Social networks reap rewards

Initiating secondary benefit schemes, such as flexible working, may seem time-consuming and costly, but employers who use such schemes are often evangelical about the benefits they bring in terms of recruitment and retention.

Even a small outlay can reap rewards in the form of happier employees, who are then more likely to work their way up the career ladder within your company than take their skills elsewhere.

Justina Moores, learning development manager at RM Education, cites the informal networks built up around simple sporting activities as a highly valuable, yet cheap, example of such schemes paying off.

"The football team was set up by the graduate recruits and you have different groups and intakes mixing in the team," she says. "They meet people they don't necessarily work with and can look to those from earlier intakes who are doing well."

The most successful ideas come from employees, so it may be worth getting together ideas from a few people and approaching the boss if you feel your business could benefit from such schemes.

But if improving the work-life balance does not appeal to your employer, these figures from Stuart Mather, community relations manager at Capital One, may provide a convincing argument.

"Six years ago, before we set up these schemes, the number of people proud to work for Capital One was around 27%," says Mather. "Now the scores are up around 80%. That is no coincidence and more people are sticking around. I have been here 13 years and have no intention of moving."